Ethics For Dummies

Christopher Panza, PhD, is a Professor of Philosophy at Drury University. He teaches Confucianism, ethics, and existentialism. He holds a PhD in Philosophy. Adam Potthast, PhD, is Dean of Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Transfer at Minnesota State College Southeast. He holds a PhD in Philosophy.

• Introduction 1About This Book 1Conventions Used in This Book 2What You’re Not to Read 3Foolish Assumptions 3How This Book Is Organized 4Part 1: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please 4Part 2: Surveying Key Ethical Theories 4Part 3: Applying Ethics to Real Life 4Part 5: The Part of Tens 4Icons Used in This Book 5Beyond the Book 5Where to Go from Here 6Part 1: Ethics 101: Just the Basics, Please 7Chapter 1: Approaching Ethics: What Is It and Why Should You Care? 9Knowing the Right Words: The Vocabulary of Ethics 10Focusing on should and ought 10Avoiding the pitfall of separating ethics and morality 11Putting law in its proper place 12Identifying Two Arguments for Being Ethical 14Why be ethical 101? It pays off! 14Why be ethical 201? You’ll live a life of integrity 15Committing Yourself to the Ethical Life 16Taking stock: Know thyself 16Building your moral framework 17Seeing where you need to go 18Chapter 2: Butting Heads: Is Ethics Just a Matter of Opinion? 21Subjectivism: Basing Ethics on Each Person’s Opinion 22Right for me and wrong for you: The subjectivist position 22Recognizing that subjectivism can’t handle disagreement 23They’re always right: Subjectivists make bad houseguests 25Determining what subjectivism gets right 26Cultural Relativism: Grounding Ethics in the Group’s Opinion 27Discovering what it means to be a cultural relativist 27Understanding why cultural relativism is always so popular 28Living in many worlds: Some problems with cultural relativism 29Looking at cultural relativism’s lack of respect for tolerance 30Noting cultural relativism’s successes 32Emotivism: Seeing Ethics as a Tool of Expression 33Expressing yourself: Booing and cheering in ethics 33Arguing emotionally: A problem for emotivists 34Getting motivation right: A victory for emotivism 36Chapter 3: Exploring Connections between Ethics, Religion, and Science 37Clarifying the Relationship between God, Religion, and Ethical Codes 38Knowing the difference between God and religion 38Contemplating the diversity of religious ethical codes 39Because God Said So: Understanding Divine Command Theory 41God’s authority: Considering why God gets to be in charge 42Figuring out what happens when divine commands conflict 43Plato’s big challenge: Questioning what makes something ethical 45When Ethics Gets in the Way of God: Introducing Kierkegaard 47The Abraham dilemma: When God tells you to kill your child 47Embracing a God who’s beyond ethics 49Overcoming your despair: Can faith take you beyond ethics? 49When God Gets in the Way of Ethics: Introducing Nietzsche 51Portraying religion as an ethics of weakness 51Leaping over faith: Ethics as inner strength rooted in self-creation 52Examining Nietzsche’s new idea: The ethics of inner strength 54The Age of Science: Figuring Out If Ethics Can Exist in a Secular World 55Staying silent on the spiritual 55Defining ethics in a materialistic world 56Establishing good behavior without heaven or hell 57Evolution and Ethics: Rising Above the Law of the Jungle 58Seeing how selfish genes can promote unselfish behavior 59Noting the irrelevance of (most) evolutionary theory to ethics 61Part 2: Surveying Key Ethical Theories 63Chapter 4: Being an Excellent Person: Virtue Ethics 65The Lowdown: Virtuous Character Matters 66Discovering why character matters 66Connecting character with action 67Seeing character as a way of life 67Virtue: Settled habits towards the good 68Linking Virtue to Cultivating Your Human Nature 69How virtue is linked to human nature 69Cultivating your nature is good and good for you 71Examining what cultivated human nature looks like 72Virtuous immersion in your social world 73Responding virtuously to the universe itself 75Asking Whether Virtue Guarantees Happiness 76Aristotle: Virtue is not enough for human flourishing 77Aurelius: Virtue is all you need to flourish 78Figuring Out How to Acquire the Virtues 79Can virtues really be taught? 79Apprenticing yourself to a virtuous master or two or three 80Aristotle: Shaping how we experience the world 81Aurelius: Correcting how we see the world 85Assessing Criticisms of Virtue Ethics 88It’s difficult to know which virtues are right 89Virtues can’t give exact guidance 90Virtue ethics is really self-centered 91Being virtuous is a lucky crapshoot 92Chapter 5: Maximizing the Good: Consequentialist Ethics 95Paying Close Attention to Results: Consequences Matter 96Consequences matter to everyone 96Consequences ethically trump principles and character 98Surveying What Makes Consequences Good 99Utilitarianism says: More pleasure, less pain (please!) 100Beethoven or beer: Recognizing why some pleasures are better than others 102Putting Utilitarianism into Action 104Whose happiness counts? 104How much happiness is enough? 105Focusing On Two Different Ways to Be a Successful Utilitarian 106Directly increasing the good through your actions 106Indirectly increasing the good by following the rules 109Exploring Traditional Problems with Utilitarianism 112Challenge 1: Justice and rights play second fiddle in utilitarianism 112Challenge 2: Utilitarianism is too demanding 114Challenge 3: Utilitarianism may threaten your integrity 115Challenge 4: Knowing what produces the most good is impossible 116Chapter 6: Doing Your Duty: The Ethics of Principle 119Kant’s Ethics: Acting on Reasonable Principles 120Defining principles 120Noting the difference between principles and rules 121Making sense of Kantian ethics: The struggle between nature and reason 122Autonomy: Being a law unto yourself 125Living by the Categorical Imperative: Reasonable Principles 126Looking behind actions: Maxims are principles 127Examining imperatives 130Surveying the Forms of the Categorical Imperative 132Form 1: Living by universal principles 132Form 2: Respecting everyone’s humanity 135Applying the Categorical Imperative to Real-Life Dilemmas 136Using the Formula of Universal Law to distinguish imperfect from perfect duties 137Applying the Formula of Humanity to ethical topics 141Scrutinizing Kant’s Ethics 142Unconditional duty: Can you lie to a murderer? 143Guiding actions in real moral dilemmas 143Making enough room for feelings 144Accounting for beings with no reason 145Chapter 7: Signing on the Dotted Line: Ethics as Contract 147Creating Ethics with Contracts 148Reviewing Hobbes’s state of nature: The war of all against all 149Escaping the state of nature: Enter the sovereign! 151Moving to the modern form of social contracts 152Restructuring Social Institutions According to Rawls’s Theory of Justice 153Taking stock of the original position and its veil of ignorance 154Arriving at the liberty and difference principles 155Beyond the Dotted Line: Criticizing Contract Theory 158But I never signed on the dotted line! 159Libertarianism: Contracts make people lose too much liberty 160Communitarianism: Challenging the veil of ignorance 161Chapter 8: Turning Down the Testosterone: Feminist Care Ethics 163The Feminist Challenge: Traditional Ethics Is Biased toward Men 164De Beauvoir: How socialization shapes our thinking 164Getting a grasp on the feminist approach 166Seeing how bias seeps into your life 168Exploring how bias infects ethics 169A case study of male bias: Kohlberg’s theory of moral development 170Considering Gilligan’s criticism of Kohlberg’s model 173Surveying a New Feminist Ethics of Care 178Putting relationships first 179Letting feelings count: Cultivating care 180Embracing partiality 182Care avoids abstraction 183Further Developing the Notion of Caring 183Caring requires a deep and reciprocal bond 184Jumping into another’s skin: Engrossment 185Moving from me to you: Motivational displacement 185Closing the loop: The need for reciprocity 186Considering the Politics of Caring 187Assembling the basic components of caring 188Embracing the political dimension of care 189Reviewing Criticisms of Care Ethics 190Care ethics and public life: An uneasy fit 190Do some relationships really deserve care? 192Could care ethics harm women? 193Chapter 9: Global Morality: Examining Non-Western Ethics 195Thinking Differently: Why Cross-Cultural Ethics Matters 196Avoiding Ethnocentrism: Seeing Ethics as Embedded in Cultural Contexts 196Cultivating Relationships: Confucian Ethics 197Why relationships? Understanding the big picture 197Embodying ren: Building excellent relationships 199The ethical importance of learning 199Mirroring good role models 200Developing the virtues to support ren 202Confucian dedication to developing others 204Reducing Suffering: Buddhist Ethics 206The significance of life before becoming Buddha 207Emergence of the Buddha and Buddhist doctrine 208The ethical cure to suffering: The eightfold path 211Cultivating virtue: Joy, kindness, and compassion 212Harmony with Nature: Daoist Ethics 213Tackling the inexpressible Dao: Life as a mystery 214Cultivating an ethics that rejects ethics 218Reawakening the Spiritual: Hindu Ethics 221Atman and brahman: Finding your eternal self 221Dharma: The ethical path to enlightenment 223Achieving liberation: The final aim of the system 227Part 3: Applying Ethics to Real Life 229Chapter 10: Dealing with Mad Scientists: Biomedical Ethics 231Examining Some Principles of Biomedical Ethics 232Paternalism: Does a doctor always know best? 232Autonomy: Being in the driver’s seat for your own healthcare decisions 233Beneficence and nonmaleficence: Doing no harm 235Taking a Closer Look at the Intractable Issue of Abortion 236Deciding who is and isn’t a person 237A right to life from the beginning: Being pro-life 238The freedom to control one’s body: Being pro-choice 238A 21st Century Problem: Attack of the Clones 239Understanding the growing use of cloning in medicine 240Determining whether cloning endangers individuality 241Anticipating Ethical Problems with Genetic Technologies 243Testing to avoid abnormalities 243Finding cures for diseases with stem cell research 244Considering genetic privacy concerns 246Manipulating the genome to create designer people 246Dying and Dignity: Debating Euthanasia 248Dealing with controversy at the end of life 248Making autonomous choices about death 249Killing the most vulnerable 250Thinking beyond the West: Palliative care 251Chapter 11: Protecting the Habitat: Environmental Ethics 253Canvassing Environmental Ethics 254Recognizing environmental problems 254Expanding care past human beings 255Determining Whose Interests Count 258Getting interested in interests 258Anthropocentrism: Only humans matter! 260Sentientism: Don’t forget animals 262Biocentrism: Please don’t pick on life 263Ecocentrism: The land itself is alive 265Turning to Environmental Approaches 269Conservationism: Keeping an eye on costs 269Deep ecology: Viewing interconnection as the key 270Social ecology: Blaming domination 272Examining Criticisms of Environmental Ethics 274Ecofascism : Pushing humans out of the picture 274Valuing things in a nonhuman-centered way: Is it possible? 275Chapter 12: Looking Out for the Little Guy: Ethics and Animals 277Focusing on the Premise of Animal Rights 278Questioning whether humans really are superior to animals 279Seeing why Peter Singer says animals feel pain, too 280Being wary of speciesism 282Experimenting on Animals for the Greater Good 284The main rationale for experimenting: Harming animals saves humans 284Debating animal testing of consumer products 286To Eat or Not to Eat Animals: That’s the Question 287Understanding why ethical vegetarians don’t eat meat 287Responding to ethical vegetarians: Omnivores strike back! 288Looking at factory farming’s effects on animals 290Vegans: Eliminating animal servitude 291Targeting the ethics of hunting animals 292Chapter 13: Vibing with the Bots: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence 295Focusing on AI: The High Stakes of Computing 296Distinguishing three types of AI: The good, the bad, and the ugly 297Regulating the robots: Goals and ethical principles for AI 300It’s getting hot in here: The environmental impact of AI 301Respecting the User: Manipulation and Deception 302Training or draining? Data accumulation, bias, and privacy rights 303Robot writers: Who owns AI-generated work? 305Gaming the system: Using AI to ace your essay 307Reality bytes: Deepfakes and propaganda 308Transparency: Making AI open-source and explainable 309Seeking the Singularity: The Day AI Outsmarts Us All 310Seeing the Singularity as a unique ethical challenge 310Existential risks: Autonomous weaponry 312Sticking up for the robots: Ethical obligations to AI 314Challenging Human Dignity: How AI Will Rewrite the Human World 314Loving the LLM: AI that cares about you 315Turning it off and on again: Sex robots? 316Losing our minds: When humans no longer understand the world 318What would you say you do here? AI and the disappearance of work 319Chapter 14: Making Accommodations: Disability Ethics 321Challenging Normality: Disability Trend Setter 322Casting disability as abnormality: The common view 322Looking under the hood and poking at normality 323Recasting disability as difference: The contrary view 324Deaf culture 325Uncovering Ableism: Hidden Discrimination 326Explaining ableism and how to spot it 327Seeing ableism as more than an intention 328Considering institutional ableism 329Exposing internalized ableism 331Interpersonal ableism 332Combatting ableism: Nothing about us, without us 334Locating Disability: Is It Physical or Social? 335Dissecting the medical model: The body as problem 336Restraining common view and medical model 338Recognizing the dangers of eugenics 338Considering genetic engineering and abortion 339Turning to the social model: Society as the problem 340Thinking biopsychosocial: The hybrid model 343Complicating Disability: Intersectional Ethics 344Understanding the experience of disability 345Complicating disability with race, gender, and class 346An ethical suggestion: Pause and ponder 349How Disability Challenges Ethics 350Chapter 15: Liking and Subscribing: Social Media Ethics 353Socializing Online: Social Media as the New Ethical Frontier 354Examining issues of privacy on the internet 355Social media and long-term online identities 362Hailing the Almighty Algorithm: Programming the Social Revolution 366The hidden hand of the platform algorithm 367Doomscrolling, addiction, and mental health in social media 370Calling the Mods: The Responsibilities of Social Media Platforms 371Part 4: the Part of Tens 373Chapter 16: Ten Famous Ethicists and Their Theories 375Confucius: Nurturing Virtue in Good Relationships 375Plato: Living Justly through Balance 376Aristotle: Making Virtue Ethics a Habit 376Hobbes: Beginning Contract Theory 377Hume: Eyeing the Importance of Moral Feelings 377Kant: Being Ethical Makes You Free 378Mill: Maximizing Utility Matters Most 379Nietzsche: Connecting Morals and Power 379Rawls: Looking Out for the Least Well-Off 380Singer: Speaking Out for Modern Utilitarianism 380Chapter 17: Ten Ethical Dilemmas Likely to Arise in the Future 381Making Designer Genes to Create Designer Babies 381Privacy Absolutism and Erasing Your Digital Self 382Managing the Growing Population of Planet Earth 383Dealing with Dramatic Increases in the Human Lifespan 383Digital Immortality and Uploading Your Mind 384Geohacking the Planet to Alter the Climate 384Exploring and Terraforming New Worlds 385Universal Basic Income — Everyone Gets a Piece of the Action 385New Governments in Virtual Reality 386Free, Unlimited Energy and the End of Scarcity 387Whoa, Dinosaur! Resurrecting Extinct Species 388Index 389